For the ashes had drifted out from the fireplace, flake after flake, and were settling about the feet of the Dark Master beneath the table. They rose slowly into a little gray pile; then one of the men shrieked in horror at the sight, and the Dark Master threw out his head.
"Slay him," he said quietly and drew in his head once more, staring at the table.
There was a thudding blow and a groan, then the stillness of death. The ashes were quiet; the fire glowed ruddily. After a little there came a soft whirl of soot down the chimney, blackening the embers. The soot rose and fell, rose and fell, again and again; it was as if an eddying draft of wind were trying to raise it. Finally it was lifted, but it only whirled about and about over the embers, like a shape drawn together by some uncanny force.
The Dark Master raised his head as a clash of steel and the voice of the watcher came from the outer doorway.
"Master, the blast thickens with black fog!"
"Remain on watch," said O'Donnell, and his head fell.
But through the hall men's hands went out to one another in the darkness. For storm-driven fog was not a thing that many men had seen even on the west coast, and when it did happen men said that a warlock was at work. There was not far to seek for the warlock in this case, muttered the O'Donnells.
Now the Dark Master looked into the fireplace and that whirling figure of soot raised itself anew and began its unearthly dance over the embers. After no long time men saw that the pile of gray ashes under the table was lifting also, lifting and whirling as though the wind spun it; but there was no wind.
"There is a man to be blinded," said the Dark Master. "Let him be blinded with fog and snow, and the men with him, and let the wind come out of the east and drive him to this place."
Slowly, so slowly that no man could afterward say where there was beginning or end, the whirling figure of soot dissipated; and little by little the dancing stream of gray ashes drifted back into the fireplace; then it also dissipated, seeming to pass up the chimney, so that the embers glowed red and naked.